Menu
I've seen while searching that it is possible to use two different programs on the same computer communicating over the network using the same port and same network interface provided one use UDP and the other TCP. However I didn't get a good explanation, how does it actually work and why this is possible?
Is it also possible for multiple programs to use the same UDP port since UDP does not establish a real connection between the peers, but just sends the packets to an address? I understand it's not possible with TCP as it creates a synchronized connection between the server and the client, but what about UDP?
Please explain in details if possible, or link a good article on the topic.
200
Yes, you can use the same port number for both TCP and UDP. Many protocols already do this, for example DNS works on udp/53 and tcp/53.
You can only have one application listening on the same port at one time. Now if you had 2 network cards, you could have one application listen on the first IP and the second one on the second IP using the same port number. For UDP (Multicasts), multiple applications can subscribe to the same port.
Yes, different applications can bind to the same port on different transport protocols. They can also open the same port on the same protocol but different IP addresses.
TCP vs UDP Once connected, a TCP socket can only send and receive to/from the remote machine. This means that you'll need one TCP socket for each client in your application. UDP is not connection-based, you can send and receive to/from anyone at any time with the same socket.
The other answers are correct but somewhat incomplete.
An IP (aka "INET") socket "connection" (i.e. communication between two processes, possibly on different machines) is defined by a 5-tuple: protocol, source address, source port, destination address, destination port. You can see that this is not limited to a stateful connection such as TCP.
This means that you can bind different processes to any unique instance of that 5-tuple. Because the "protocol" (e.g. TCP and UDP) is part of the differentiating factor, each can have a different process.
Theoretically, you could bind different services to the same TCP port if they bind to different interfaces (network cards, loopback, etc.) though I've never tried it.
It is standard practice, however, to always use the same service on the same port number. If both UDP and TCP are supported, they're just different ways of communicating with that same service. DNS, for example, uses UDP on port 53 for lookup because they are small requests and it's faster than creating a TCP connection but DNS also uses TCP on port 53 for "transfers" which are infrequent and can have large amounts of data.
Lastly, in complete accuracy, it isn't necessarily a 5-tuple. IP uses the "protocol" to pass to the next layer such as TCP and UDP though there are others. TCP and UDP each seperately differentiate connections based on the remaining 4 items. It's possible to create other protocols on top of IP that use completely different (perhaps port-less) differentiation mechanisms.
And then there are different socket "domains", such as the "unix" socket domain, which is completely distinct from "inet" and uses the filesystem for addressing.
198
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
